


Somewhere Over The Rainbow

by LinaRai



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Fluff, Historian!Aziraphale, Immortal Crowley (Good Omens), M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:48:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28999281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinaRai/pseuds/LinaRai
Summary: When Aziraphale bumps into a stranger on his way to work, he doesn't think anything of it.That is, until he discovers a Victorian-era oil painting of said stranger a few hours later.[ON HOLD]
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

Aziraphale was late for work. Again.

For such a polite, hardworking man, people were constantly surprised by his continued tardiness. He never _meant_ to be late, of course, but there was always something that kept him up until the early hours of the morning (usually a rather gripping novel) and no matter how loud his alarm clock was, he almost always slept through it.

So, once again, he was sprinting through the bustling streets of London, a stack of books shoved messily under one arm as he frantically rummaged through his bag with his other hand, attempting to fish out his phone. In fact, he was so preoccupied with his quest that he forgot to look where he was going and ran head first into someone walking the opposite direction.

“You alright?” the stranger asked, offering him a hand up with an amused smirk. Aziraphale did not take it, instead focused on scooping up his work, which was currently scattered across the pavement and in danger of being trodden on.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he apologised, haphazardly shoving pieces of paper into his satchel. “I’m in a bit of a rush, you see, and I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“Eh, it’s fine,” the man replied. Aziraphale finally stood up, ready to continue his panicked commute, but he paused for a moment to check if the stranger was okay. He was tall and impossibly skinny, with flaming red hair and a peculiar pair of sunglasses perched on his nose, even though it was fairly cloudy and only seven o’clock in the morning.

“Are you alright?” Aziraphale asked, forgetting how late he was for a moment.

“Fine, thanks. Maybe watch where you’re going next time, wouldn’t want you running into a lamppost and ruining that pretty face of yours.”

Aziraphale blushed. “Well, I’d better be going. Have a nice day, sir.”

“You too, I guess.”

He couldn’t quite pinpoint why, but Aziraphale was still thinking about the stranger long after sitting at his desk. No random Londoner had ever had this impression on him before, not in the entire twelve years he had been living there. He found the entire situation quite peculiar.

“Aziraphale,” a voice rang out behind him and he cringed before slowly turning around and pasting what he hoped passed as a pleasing smile on his face.

“Yes, sir?”

“You’re late,” his boss pointed out. “Again.”

“I’m terribly sorry, sir, you see-”

Michael looked down at him, frowning. It crossed Aziraphale’s mind that he might never have seen the man with anything remotely resembling a smile. “I don’t want to hear your excuses. If you’re late again, you’re fired.”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows shot up. “Fired? But-”

“There’s a new shipment coming in, I want you to look through it before we pass it on to the museum.” Michael paused, checking his watch. “Actually, since you were late, it should be here by now. I suggest you get yourself down there quickly, before I change my mind.”

“Of course,” he replied, biting back a sharper response before he got himself fired on the spot, quickly gathering up the necessary supplies from his cluttered drawers. Michael was still watching him as he left the room, hurrying down to the loading bay. Some days, Aziraphale was certain that he had nothing better to do than antagonise his employees.

As much as Aziraphale loathed his interactions with his boss, he did love his job. He had always been drawn to books, so to be classified as an expert on ancient tomes was a dream come true. Besides, books could often be flown to him, so he rarely had to leave the city he so loved unlike some other archaeologists he knew.

Anathema was already waiting for him by the time he had descended the three flights of stairs to get to the basement. “Late again?” she asks, no malice in her tone.

“It’s not my fault!” Aziraphale insisted.

They started unloading the crates wordlessly; years of working together meant that they knew exactly what they were doing. “What’s your excuse this time?”

“Not that Michael wanted to hear it, but I bumped into a stranger and dropped all my work.”

“Ooh!” Anathema handed him a box labelled _‘BOOKS’._ “Was he handsome?”

“What? I- I don’t- Why would you ask that?” Aziraphale stuttered.

“You’re blushing! He was, wasn’t he?” she teased, carefully undoing the packaging of a painting that she had been talking about for weeks. Aziraphale crowded in behind her, infected with her enthusiasm. Supposedly, it had been in two separate buildings that had been bombed during World War II, and yet it had survived by some kind of miracle both times.

“Here, help me lift it out,” she says, and Aziraphale complies, gently pulling away the packaging from the bottom. “Wow.”

Anathema turns around, gingerly resting the painting on the wall as she clambers gracefully over the mess on the floor to grab her tools. Aziraphale can’t move, fixated on the eyes of the man staring back at him. 

How the stranger from this morning has an oil painting dating back to the Victorian era is beyond him, but he is suddenly determined to find out how.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Hopefully, I'll update this every week, but I have to be honest: I'm not super good with schedules. This is also my first Good Omens fic, which I'm super excited about! 
> 
> If you want to make sure you get updates and you have tumblr, you can join my tag list by asking me on [@fanfic-corner.](https://fanfic-corner.tumblr.com)


	2. Chapter 2

As it turns out, not many people believe you when you insist the handsome, flirty stranger you bumped into on the way to work this morning is the spitting image of the significantly older oil painting currently in your office’s basement. 

Anathema, bless her, is certain that Aziraphale simply isn’t getting enough sleep. “Are you sure? I mean, it’s probably just a coincidence, right?”

He nods absently, eyes still fixed on the painting. “You’re sure it’s real?”

She stares at him for a moment longer, as if assessing him, before responding. “Yes, it looks like it.” 

Other than the familiar face, the portrait isn’t anything unusual. They’ve had plenty of weirder items come through here; ancient knives rusted with equally ancient blood, paintings of everything you could dream of, and all kinds of funny looking artefacts. Aziraphale _knows_ that Anathema is right; the chances of it being the same mystery man is… well, zero, surely? But he can’t help but feel like there’s something else going on here.

“Right, well, I… uh, I’m going to go back to my desk now.”

Anathema grabs his arm before he can make his hasty exit. “Zira, you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” he replies, forcing a smile to prove his point. She doesn’t look convinced, but she drops his arm anyway.

When Aziraphale makes it back to his cluttered desk, he does not, in fact, start working on the books like he is supposed to. Instead, he finds himself reverse image searching the man based on the photo he sneakily took while Anathema was busy with something else.

There, on the screen, pops up a name. _Lord A Crowley._

With a place to start, it’s not long before he’s following breadcrumbs from one end of the internet to the other, all these strange articles and bizarre black and white pictures linked together by only one name: Crowley. 

By the time the office empties and dusk has fallen, Aziraphale has a whole folder full of evidence. This so-called Crowley had not only had a legitimate Victorian oil painting done of him, but had also been in an article about a church that was miraculously saved during World War Two, a sketch of the audience for the premiere of Hamlet, some paperwork for the construction of the M25, and he could _swear_ that the stories from the French Revolution were also about this impossible man. And, if Aziraphale followed his hunch, then another person - Crawley - might even be one and the same with this Crowley, and that dated all the way back to legends from Ancient Rome! 

It was completely baffling, yet Aziraphale had never felt so intrigued about anything in his entire life. There was almost no doubt in his mind that this Crowley had somehow lived through all these centuries of history, yet that was surely impossible. 

It struck him, in that moment, that he needed to find this man and talk to him. Imagine the questions he could ask! As a historian, this man must be a fountain of information, since apparently he lived through so much of the time that Zira studied. Perhaps he knew the answers to all the mysteries that their department had never been able to solve…

 _And,_ he supposed as he finally rose from his desk to head home, _I suppose it can’t hurt that he is also a rather handsome fellow._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I usually write things that are longer than this! I'm just struggling at the moment because I have so many projects going on at once. I hope you enjoyed it anyway, even if it was an incredibly short chapter!
> 
> Edit 22/2/21: I'm really sorry, but I'm going to be putting this fic on hold for a while! I've been really struggling with online school and have stressed myself out by having too many WIPs, and, to be honest, this is the one I'm least invested in. That being said, I really don't want to leave it forever - my new year's resolution this year was to finish all my WIPs! - so hopefully I'll return to it at some point in the future. Thank you so much for reading and to all the people that commented, and I hope that this doesn't disappoint you too much. <3


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